Ch-ch-ch-changes!!!

Normally I LOVE Fridays! But this Friday is a sad one. It's the last Friday of SUMMER! Next Friday is "Meet the Teacher" and Brittany and I will be meeting our new students and their families! Earlier this week I had lunch with one of my former students, Ryan and his sweet grandma. It was a reminder that my first graders (of only two months ago) are about to be second graders. It was also a bit sad that I will not being seeing their smiling faces in the halls. My former students visit every Friday before the bell rings to give me some "Good news for goodies" and it's something I've always really enjoyed! It's a great way to make sure they are staying on the right track! I'm really excited about a new school year but also a little nervous because it feels a lot like being a new teacher again. I know our coworkers and new students will be very accepting, though. It's a sweet, little town and we've already been given a very warm welcome! Just wish I could take all my kiddos with me!

We made our school-change official the other day when we went to go pick up our new I.D badges!

Fancy, I know! Why must all id/license pictures look more like mug shots?  I wanted to spend my last day of summer doing something F-U-N and I chose to spend most of the day on the couch watching a lot of TV... it was perfect! I also did some reading and of course... some blogging! I'm working on a packet for our new reading series. I'm still on unit 1 but hope to be finished soon. Here's a sneak peak..

So far the packet is already 15 pages and it's only for 1 week but I made sure to incorporate activities for all different levels and teachers can use this packet to differentiate activities according to student needs. I plan on having a packet for every week/unit in our new series so I have a lot of work to do! I'm going to get back to my relaxing Friday and put this packet on hold until next week! For all of our friends who are back to school already, good luck and we hope it went smoothly! 

Read EVERY DAY!!!

Happy Monday! It's our LAST Monday of summer... sob. Unfortunately, I scheduled a bunch of trainings for today. I thought I'd enjoy the extra money$$$. I wish I would've followed Brittany's lead and only signed up for in-services on one day this week. Instead I signed up for all three! It seemed like a good idea at the time! Doesn't it always?? I have so much to do in my classroom and around my home that the last thing I want to do is sit in an inservice about our math series. B-O-R-I-N-G!

Enough of my rant. On a brighter note. We have a freebie to share with you today! Cue: CHEERING!

This is only a sample of what the reading log should look like! 

Reading logs are a BIG deal in our classrooms. I had a really hard time monitoring weekly reading logs and keeping up with the copies. Last year I created a new one and it is a monthly log. It is so much easier to manage and I think the layout provides everything I need.

I give the Monthly log out at the beginning of the month (The first Friday of each month). Students have from the Friday night until the following Thursday night to complete their log. I check logs on Friday at school. The first few months of school I only ask that students read for 50 minutes a week (an average of 10 minutes a night). After winter break I usually up the reading minutes to 75-100 minutes a week (an average of 15-20 minutes a night). On Friday's, after I've checked logs, I invite all students who have completed their minutes to LUNCH BUNCH with me! One of my 1st grade team members, Susan shared this idea with me. It's free and we always have a great time! Sometimes we have a picnic outside. Other days we watch a movie. The kids really get a kick out of it and it really serves it's purpose. My students READ ALL--- THE---- TIME! They simply can't miss lunch bunch! Most of the time I have almost my entire class with me! When we do get the whole class I usually surprise them with some playground time. We don't have recess in our county :( It's AWESOME and I enjoy hearing about all of the books they are reading during our lunch date!

Here's your copy! Enjoy!!! 

Click here for your FREE Monthly Reading Log! 

I file the logs at the end of the month. For every 100 minutes my students read, they earn a bead for the A.R necklaces! I give out the beads at the end of the month and hand out a fresh log for the new month.

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WBT: Mirror Variations

Happy Weekend! We only have one weekend left before school starts. Oh sweet summer, why must you end so soon? Some how we both managed to get today off from work at our second job so we have a little time to blog! Since "BACK TO SCHOOL" time is just around the corner we have "Whole Brain Teaching" on our minds. We started using the WBT methods two years ago and folks... we are never going back! 

One of our favorite parts of WBT is the Mirror strategy:

Teacher: Class!

Students: YES!

Teacher: Mirror (teacher puts hands up in front) 

Students: Mirror (students follow teacher gesture)

Once everyone is in position teacher will use hand motions and words (you can teach mirror with just hands or words if you'd like). 

After students have "mirrored" your gestures they are ready to teach each other.

Teacher: TEACH!

Students: OK!!!

*Give students about 1-2 minutes to "teach" concept using gestures and words learned while mirroring YOU! 

Watch this video below to see "mirror" in action: 

This strategy is using the motor cortex: 

Below you will find some variations to using MIRROR gestures in your classroom!

We're looking forward to spicing up our whole brain teaching approach this year! 

What is Nonfiction?

Hi, Friends! We hope everyone is having a wonderful Wednesday! We both worked a double shift at work last night so we didn't get into our classrooms at all. We still have so much work to do. This is how we left our rooms on Monday night... scary!

Did we mention we found A LOT of bugs... ewww! 

We also found time to meet with our "old" first grade team! Love them! We plan on continuing our reunions indefinitely!

We also bought an amazing Informational Text packet from Hello Literacy a few weeks ago. The packet has a wealth of information and was one of our best purchases yet! We started organizing the packet for the upcoming school year and we decided to introduce the unit using the anchor chart below.  

To introduce Nonfiction: Informational Text we are going to first brainstorm all of the things we use to get "information".

We made a quick circle map for our student's to use and record in their reading response journals. 

Informational Text Circle Map

We hope this is helpful when introducing informational text to your students. 

After this brief "activating strategy" we would like our students to research some websites with quality informational text examples. Here are just a few: 

Kids Blog: National Geographic

Scholastic News

Kids National Geographic: Stories

Time For Kids

It's time to head back to the mess we currently call our classrooms. Talk to you all very soon! 

McGraw-Hill WONDERS: Vocabulary Unit 2

Quick post today because we are still hunting for bridemaids dresses! Thank goodness Brittany was able to find her wedding gown because finding dresses for the maids has been pretty difficult. Below you will find the link to FREE vocabulary cards for Unit 2 for the Wonders series... 1st grade, obvi! 

These cover unit 2 L.A/Science/S.S

CLICK HERE to download!

Have a Marvelous Monday Everyone!

Never MOVING again!

Happy Friday Everyone! If you're like us... Friday is just another day when it's summertime! L-O-V-E T-H-A-T! We planned on going thrifting early this morning but after a really rough day of moving into our classrooms yesterday it's been a struggle to get going today. We kept joking that we will retire in our new classrooms because moving has been NO FUN! Yesterday we met at school to get our boxes out of the storage portable and move them across the school into our new classrooms. I have already moved quite a few things but we still had a lot more to move. My sweet fiancé offered to come help but Brittany and I thought we could handle it... bad move.

18 total trips!! 

We were lucky enough to hunt down some carts to help with the move but it still took FOREVER!!! We made a bet about how many trips it would take us to get everything to our new rooms. Brittany bet 8 trips (16 trips between the two of us) and I bet 9 (18 between the two of us). I was correct so the first round is on Brittany next time we meet for happy hour! I honestly was hoping she'd be right because we were both drenched in sweat and dreading each round moving.

Our hallway was looking very crowded!

As we have already said many times our classrooms are SO TINY a little bit smaller so we are going to have to downsize. Brittany and I are both hoarders when it comes to our classrooms. It's so hard to let things go. Tear...

Before we could put everything in our classrooms we had to do some major cleaning. I thought I finished this part last week but I was wrong. It was pretty dirty!

evidence 

Exhibit B: Old rusty horseshoes 

Strangely enough, there was very little left in our rooms. I kid you not, I did not find a single pencil, piece of paper, paper clip------ NOTHING. However I did manage to find a few strange things.

Exhibit A: A floppy disk converter

Even the hoarder in me was able to throw away the random leftovers. Now it's time to bring all of our boxes into our rooms and start sorting through it. As you can see we have a lot of cabinets. However, we do not have closets or pods so whatever doesn't fit in the cabinets will have to go.

The view from my front door. 

My desk! 

You're probably wondering what the lasso is for... I got it two years ago for teaching "Sammy the Summarizer." He's a cute cowboy that teaches students to "lasso" in all of the important details in the story and let go of the rest.

 Made by A Teeny Tiny Teacher

I promise it's not used for any type of discipline purposes! Can't say it hasn't crossed my mind! I kid.

It's time to redo all of my reading files to fit the new series. 

If we don't make it out to thrift today I plan on finishing up filing for our new reading series, Wonders and doing some planning for Brittany's Bridal Shower in September. Thank goodness for pinterest! I have found a bunch of free printables and DIY ideas! Hope everyone has a great weekend! :)

TIme to say "YES" to another dress!

Good evening friends! We have been far from frugal the last few days and it's not by choice! We've been doing some BIG things for Brittany's wedding and there is NOTHING frugal about a wedding! We have had a lot of fun spending though!

Bridesmaid dress shopping for Brittany's wedding in Orlando! 

We've been working a lot at the restaurant this summer to help fund our upcoming nuptials. We were so bored at work on Sunday that we actually started playing MASH in Brittany's "Wedding Notes" book. Do you remember that game?? Ha! We made into an "adult version" which included your fortune along with an entire bio to go with it. Can you say, BORED! In Brittany's MASH future she is divorced with seven kids living in a purple shack... she was making $100,000 a year though. It's safe to say she was not a teacher! Oh goodness! Good thing it's just a game! MASH made work way more fun and we had a lot of laughs!

     M- Mansion
        A- Apartment
S- Shack
 H- House 

On Tuesday Morning we met up early and headed to Orlando. We spent the day eating shopping for bridesmaids dresses for Brittany's wedding. We started in Winter Park at The Collection and they quickly let us know that we should have started this process months ago! Who knew that bridesmaids dresses took so long? We thought three months was plenty of time. WRONG! We found some expensive, beautiful dresses and realized that all of these deadlines were making us hungry. It was already time for lunch! We stopped at one of my favorite restaurants Dexters for lunch! We enjoyed a glass of wine and some appetizers!

After lunch we went to Bella Bridesmaids. We had a great time their and the owner was so sweet and helpful! Brittany sat back on the couch and watched Kelly (another bridesmaid) and I try on a bunch of dresses! We didn't find a winner but we were off to a great start! 

Kelly and I (Melissa) trying on some bridesmaid dresses!

After Bella's we stopped at David's Bridal but they didn't have what we were looking for. After leaving David's a little discouraged we decided to throw in the towel and just go grab dinner. While heading across the street to the Millenia Mall we stumbled upon Solutions Bridal. 

*Fun Fact- Jessica, my friend and sorority sister got her dress at Solutions Bridal! She is also the author of one of our favorite blogs Rambling About Reading! 

We found a beautiful Dessy dress, but unfortunately it could not be ordered in time. We were not having very good luck! When we got to the mall we stopped in the department stores and found a ton of beautiful bridesmaids dresses in all the wrong colors and sizes. FAIL! 

We ended our day on a much brighter note at The Cheesecake Factory! I guess you could say we were "eating our feelings" because even though we were pretty bummed that we weren't going home with dresses it didn't stop us from eating way too many apps and leaving dinner as if the day was a total success!! 

The Cheesecake Factory Happy Hour is AMAZING!! So many apps for only $5!
Have you had their avocado egg rolls.... to die for! 

We eventually decided to just go home and search the web for the perfect dress! We found a bunch of beautiful, affordable dresses online at http://dressilyme.com. Hopefully we will be ordering our dresses tonight! *Fingers Crossed*

I can't wait for Brittany and Matt's Wedding. It's only 93 days away and will be here before we know it! They are such a wonderful couple and two of my favorite people in the world!

We are heading into school today to work in our NEW classrooms and unpack all of our boxes! We have tons of work to do and it involves a lot of downsizing because our rooms are much smaller. Thank goodness for Pandora and Sour Patch Kids! It's time to get to school! Strolling in after 11:00 is way better than 6:30!

See ya later!